An Inconvenient Truth: Movies and TV Shows ⭐

The day that I canceled my Netflix subscription was a good one. I had long entertained the idea that I would one day round-robin streaming video services, moving from one to the other on a monthly basis. And while I’m not quite there as I write this, I’m closer than I’ve ever been and, given whatever subscriptions I still pay for, as close as is currently possible.

It is only coincidental that a Netflix price hike, one of many for that and the other streaming services we all pay for, kicked off this series two months ago. But Netflix is, in many ways, unique. We can debate the quality of its various innovations in streaming video, but to me, its biggest contribution has been tightening the vice on subscription sharing, going so far as to charge families for additional members who live outside the home. This shift is what triggered my current stance on subscriptions, first slowly and vaguely and then with more clarity and urgency.

Netflix is also one of the clearest examples of enshittification. Cory Doctorow, who coined that term, tends to focus on the abuses foisted on the world by Big Tech companies like Apple, Google, and Meta, and for good reason. But Netflix is as good an example as any, and better than most, a service that was a no-brainer due to its high value, an excellent combination of low costs and quality content. Until, of course, it wasn’t.

I was a Netflix subscriber when the company was shipping thin red envelopes stuffed with DVDs around the country. When Blockbuster Video responded with its own similar but better service, I took advantage of that, too, until Netflix finally snuffed the life out of that business as the world moved inevitably to an all-digital future. The Netflix service we know today started humbly, as an add-on to the DVD business, and the quality of its video library was sub-bargain bin. But that changed in time as Netflix shifted to being streaming-first and then streaming only. It out-HBOed HBO with high quality original content, and it licensed an ever-growing body of existing work.

You don’t have to be a student of economic theory to know that, in an ideal world, businesses have competitors, and those competitors keep each other honest. Competition should breed price wars and deals to entice users to switch from one to the other. And yet we live in an era in which there have never been more streaming video services, and the prices have nonetheless gone up repeatedly in lock-step with declining quality. Netflix used to offer top-notch series like Narcos and Orange is the New Black, but now it offers a sea of low-quality licensed content from India that I never want to see and crap like Red Notice, a movie stuffed with A-list actors working in front of green screens because their fees made filming on location untenable.

Three years ago, I paid $19.99 per month for Netflix. Two months ago, Netflix emailed me to tell me about a change in my subscription: It was going up from $24.99 per month to $26.99 per month, its second price hike in just over a year. But the changes were bigger than $7 per month: Three years ago, my kids could use my Netflix subscription from college dorm rooms in other states that, incidentally, I was also paying for. This year, Netflix wants me to pay extra for those kids, $9.99 extra per month per kid. And that would have raised my monthly cost to about $45, over double the price I was paying three years ago.

So that was the end of that. For all the complaining over all the years, Netflix finally inspired me to do something about this cancer. And so I cut deep. Not just Netflix, but all kinds of other subscriptions. Today, I pay about $100 less per month for subscriptions than I was paying two months ago, and my only regret is that it took so long.

Granted, I am cheating in some ways, too. I don’t pay for Apple TV+ and maybe wouldn’t, not every month, but I get that as part of an Apple One subscription. I don’t watch Amazon Prime, but I could–with ads–thanks to my Amazon Prime membership. And I watch YouTube more than any video streaming service and pay for it, but that’s not about professionally-made content, it’s basically video podcasts made by individuals.

More recently, we had that Internet service disruption in Mexico City. This is related and unrelated, if that makes sense; Internet service is also a monthly subscription service, really, but it’s more essential than entertainment. It’s what enables me to pay for all those other subscriptions in the first place, a sort of mother of all subscriptions, if you will, though my electricity provider may also have opinions on this matter. But whatever. When the guys from TotalPlay came to drop off my new router and TV box, they also came bearing gifts: I could choose two free streaming services–with ads–as part of my Internet package. So I chose Netflix, which I had just killed in the states, and HBO Max.

I never signed up for either, so TotalPlay has emailed me regularly to remind me that I should do so. I finally gave in and added Netflix to my Apple TV in Mexico City, starting fresh with a new account, of course. And then it sat there unused for whatever number of days until I finally picked up the remote and started streaming the first episode of Breaking Bad. Not to watch it, as I’d already seen the whole series, but rather just to see what the advertising was like. Two episodes later, I have yet to see an ad. Maybe that kicks in later. I don’t know.

I also don’t care anymore. Between Apple TV+, YouTube, and massive collections of previously ripped DVDs and purchased digital movies and TV shows across multiple services, I’m good. I can rent new movies if needed. I can sign up for a service for a month if there’s some new series I want to see. I’m pretty much where I always expected to be someday.

This works because of the semi-unique nature of video content. As with reading books (and listening to audiobooks), we watch most movies and TV shows just once. So owning this content is less vital, as is having a seemingly infinite collection of this content to stream. Indeed, one of the ironies here is that the sheer amount of choice one gets with Netflix or whatever combination of services you have causes more problems than advantages. This feels like a joke as I write this, but it’s not: My wife and I have spent almost as much time trying to find something to watch as we did actually watching content. There’s more clarity when your choices are somewhat limited.

There are movies and some TV shows I’ve watched repeatedly, like the Star Wars and James Bond movies and others. But those are exceptions. And much of the content I did buy over the years on Apple or whatever other services was purchased on sale, not full-price when new. It’s still hundreds of thousands of dollars, yes. But it’s also just there now if I ever want to watch any of it, a reasonable amount of choice.

One thing I will not be getting into now is ripping DVDs or Blu-rays. For starters, I am not buying that content in physical media form, that’s silly. And there are technical issues ripping Blu-ray now that require one to purchase specific hardware players and use open source firmware replacements. It’s just not a mainstream activity and not worth the time and effort. The content I want to see is all out there. I own some of it already; I can stream the rest as needed. It’s enough.

Actually, it’s better than that. Not ideal per se; there likely isn’t a universal sweet spot for this kind of thing. But it’s good. The monthly savings are a net positive, of course, but I feel like the mental fog that comes with nearly unlimited choices isn’t well understood until you eliminate it. Here, too, I only regret that I waited so long.